永康＋薄（熙来）: Yongkang + Bo (Xilai): Zhou Yongkang was a close ally of Bo Xilai, and reportedly Bo’s sole supporter when Bo was first investigated in 2012.

Jiang Zeming Rumors: Google search results for the following blocked keywords come most frequently from the websites of New Tang Dynasty Television, Aboluowang, and the Epoch Times.

二奸二（假）: two betrayals and two falsehoods—In 2009, historian Lü Jiaping published the article “About Jiang Zemin’s ‘Two Betrayals and Two Falsehoods’: Political Issues and a Request for Fraud Investigation.” In 2011, Lü was sentenced to ten years in prison for inciting subversion. Earlier this month, Lü was reportedly released from prison on bail for medical reasons [Chinese].

江＋苏俄奸细: Jiang + Soviet spy—Jiang Zemin allegedly had an affair with a Soviet spy during his time in Russia. “Carat Baby” (克拉娃), a reference to the supposed spy, is also frequently a sensitive search term.

网特: Internet agent—Typically implies CIA or Western agents, the foreign equivalent of the Fifty Cent Party in China.

今年＋2015年: this year + 2015—Unclear why this keyword combination is blocked. Reader tips are welcome.

不雅: indecency

CDT Chinese runs a project that crowd-sources filtered keywords on Sina Weibo search. CDT independently tests the keywords before posting them, but some searches later become accessible again. We welcome readers to contribute to this project so that we can include the most up-to-date information.

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2015/02/sensitive-zhou-yongkangs-former-associates/feed/0China Set to Reduce Scope of Death Penaltyhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/10/china-set-reduce-scope-death-penalty/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/10/china-set-reduce-scope-death-penalty/#commentsTue, 28 Oct 2014 02:02:30 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=178570The AP reports that China’s National People’s Congress is likely to roll back the country’s death penalty, abolishing it for nine of the remaining 55 capital crimes.

The crimes include illegal fund raising, counterfeiting, smuggling counterfeit currency, organizing prostitution, forcing others to engage in prostitution, and smuggling weapons, ammunition and nuclear materials. They also include two military-related crimes — obstructing others from performing military duties and fabricating rumors to confuse the public during war time.

China currently has 55 crimes that are punishable by death, including murder, burglary, rape and drug-related offenses. Some economic crimes, such as embezzlement and taking bribes, are also punishable by death, although Chinese courts rarely hand out capital punishment for them.

[…] China has been gradually reducing the number of crimes punishable by death. In 2011, it dropped the death penalty for 13 crimes such as smuggling precious metals, teaching others criminal methods, and illegally excavating ancient tombs. [Source]

The draft amendment did not remove capital punishment for corruption crimes. Instead, lawmakers are considering imposing harsher punishment on those committing crimes of embezzlement and bribery.

Those involved in such crimes with “especially huge amounts of money and causing especially huge loss to the interest of the country and people” could be sentenced to death, according to the draft amendment.

[…] Those promoting terrorism and extremism by producing and distributing related materials, releasing information, instructing in person or through audio, video or information networks will face more than five years in prison in serious cases. Those who instigate violent terror activities will also face the same punishment, according to the draft amendment.

Those who instigate or force people to damage legal systems including marriage, justice, education and social management will be sentenced to more than seven years in prison in extremely serious cases, according to the draft.

[…] Organizing cheating in examinations and bringing civil litigations based on fabricated facts to pursue illegitimate interests are also listed as crimes that are punishable to imprisonment up to seven years and three years respectively. [Source]

The issue of civil servants’ pay has been widely debated in China over the last year. Civil servants complain that their pay is far too low but members of the public have little sympathy, arguing that civil servants have a wide range of benefits and can always earn more money off-the-books (so-called “grey income”) by abusing their official position.

Last month, China Youth Daily talked to a young civil servant in Beijing, Li Ming, who was anxious to dispel some of the myths about the service. He earned just over 3,000 yuan a month, about the same as a factory worker in Shenzhen, and said that nearly all of his salary was gone by the end of the month.

Li explained that the government’s austerity drive and clampdown on corruption meant that no one had any chance to earn grey income anymore or spend the public’s money for their own benefit. Even his bosses, he said, were now going around on bicycles rather than in cars. […] [Source]

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/09/daily-grind-junior-civil-servant-beijing/feed/0Two Approaches to Countering Corruptionhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/09/two-approaches-countering-corruption-china/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/09/two-approaches-countering-corruption-china/#commentsWed, 03 Sep 2014 21:45:13 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=176850In contrast with the popular “strike harder” tone of Xi Jinping’s campaign against corrupt officials, leading corruption expert Ren Jianming proposes a partial amnesty. This, he argues, would allow government to keep functioning and contain the damage to its reputation as it weans itself off pervasive corruption in which officials have had little choice but to participate.

Hong Kong just drew a line and pardoned everyone who was corrupt before a certain date, but that’s not enough. In China, I think we could draw the line at the 18th Congress, when the leadership changed. Those who became corrupt before that can be pardoned, those afterwards cannot. Second, you have to turn yourself in. Third, consider the circumstances. If the situation is especially serious, for example in Zhou’s case, with economic issues, a corrupt empire, the mafia and moral problems and so on.

[…] My proposal is for a partial amnesty, no legal punishment and you won’t get fired. But you must pay the economic and social costs of your corruption. A corrupt official may only have received bribes one million from an engineering project, but the cost to the state may have been 10 million or more. Well, you’ll have to return it. [Source]

Hai Rui was a Ming Dynasty official renowned for austerity, honesty and bluntness. On one occasion, he sent a memorial to the Jiaqing Emperor telling him that he was cruel, vain, selfish and foolish, and also a failure as a father, husband and ruler. This led to his arrest, but he came back to serve under two more emperors, including Wan Li, to whom he recommended severe penalties for stopping official corruption – the example he offered was that of punishing embezzling officials by killing them, peeling their skin off and then making them into balloons filled with grass for public display. [Source]

The degree of openness wasn’t immediately clear. But the move raises the possibility that U.S. and U.K. officials will be allowed to observe the proceedings against Peter William Humphrey, a 58-year-old British national, and his wife, Yu Yingzeng, a 61-year-old American. U.S. consular officials had previously said the court planned to bar foreign consular officials and families of the investigators because of privacy issues.

[…] An open trial makes it more likely that the court will disclose some of the proceedings through its official social-media accounts or through one of China’s official news services. But it isn’t likely that the court will be open to foreign journalists. Foreign reporters are rarely allowed to observe Chinese court proceedings. Local reporters sometimes attend, but attendees are generally selected by court officials. [Source]

ChinaWhys, the risk consultancy run by the couple, was employed by GSK in April 2013 to investigate an ex-employee suspected of sending anonymous emails, including the circulation of an intimate video of former GSK China head Mark Reilly with his girlfriend, as well as emails containing allegations of widespread bribery at the British drugmaker.

In an eight-minute news report aired on Monday by state run China Central Television (CCTV), Humphrey said he and his wife “deeply regret” breaking any Chinese law. He added ChinaWhys would not have worked with GSK if the drugmaker had informed him about the full details of the whistleblower emails.

[…] Xinhua said Humphrey and Yu had paid people in Beijing and Shanghai to purchase personal information. Citing the prosecutor on the case, the news agency added that the couple had been fully aware of the illegality of their actions.

Between 2009 and 2013, the couple illegally obtained private information during investigations into close to a thousand firms and a large number of private individuals, including household registration data, real estate and vehicle documents, as well as phone records, it added. [Source]

While the charges relate to their work for GSK, the state-run Legal Daily newspaper said the couple “made millions of yuan every year” and had conducted more than 700 investigations in the past decade.

“They investigated a huge number of people, illegally conducting their household registration information, their car licence plate numbers, looking into their families, the logs of when they entered and left China, their phone records and their corporate files,” reported the newspaper.

“They bought this information, paying 800 yuan (£80) to 1000 yuan (£100) each time. They took covert photographs, they sneaked into properties and they used false identities,” it added.

Clients of the couple’s firm, ChinaWhys, included “large multinationals, including financial companies, manufacturing firms and law firms”, according to the Chinese media. [Source]

The trial of Peter Humphrey and Chinese-born American Yu Yingzeng will be closed to family members and consular officials “on the grounds of privacy”, said the friend, who requested anonymity because of the case’s sensitivity.

[…] “I am very worried that family and consular officials are not allowed to attend my parents’ trial,” the couple’s 19-year-old son, Harvey Humphrey, said on Wednesday after US consular officials visited his mother. “This does not involve state secrets. This does not involve national security. It is about two private individuals, my parents.

“I am surprised at this decision since China wants to promote openness and the rule of law, and I hope that they will relent and let me in. I haven’t seen them for a year. I am shocked and upset. I miss my parents, who are not in good health.”

[…] The London-based NGO Fair Trials International expressed concern over the closed hearing. “In China, whose supreme people’s court proclaims an astonishing 99.5% conviction rate, criminal justice is used as a way of reinforcing state control, rather than finding truth and pursuing justice,” said Jago Russell, the group’s chief executive. [Source]

One of the most extraordinary aspects of the case is that Mr Humphrey was not shown the whistleblower’s email allegations against GSK when he was hired to investigate Vivian Shi [the company’s former head of government relations].

In a statement dictated from prison, Mr Humphrey said that when he offered to look into the allegations, GSK told him they had already found them to be untrue. But when he finally saw the whistleblower’s email, just weeks before his own arrest, he made it clear that he believed the allegations were credible.

In an email to colleagues he said: “I can only assume that they didn’t give them to us because they were afraid we would find the allegations credible and start verifying them… Actually I do believe every word of these allegations. They are totally credible.” [Source]

The British drug maker regarded the video—apparently shot without the executive’s knowledge—as a breach of security, the person said.

The executive in the video, Mark Reilly, directed the company to hire a Shanghai-based private investigation firm run by a British national and his Chinese-born wife to investigate the breach, the person said.

[…] Until this weekend’s disclosure about the video, it wasn’t clear whether ChinaWhys had been working for Glaxo when its owners were seized by authorities. The details of the video were reported by Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper.

[…] Chinese law enforcement in May accused Mr. Reilly of ordering subordinates to commit bribery that generated billions of yuan in revenue for Glaxo’s China operations. Authorities alleged that Mr. Reilly, a Briton, ordered his sales team and other employees to bribe hospital doctors, health-care organizations and other parties on “a large scale” to boost drug sales in China. [Source]

Surveillance — or the threat of surveillance — is a constant in China. As a journalist, I may be more interesting to the powers that be than some other foreigners here. But other expat friends who’ve been followed, hacked or otherwise tracked in China include diplomats, NGO staff and businesspeople. Also, artists and academics.

Sometimes, the scrutiny can yield helpful consequences. A diplomat in China remembers commenting to his wife in his then nearly empty apartment that they were out of toilet paper. A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door and a bearer of new rolls arrived.

In most instances, it is in no way reassuring to have your email auto-forwarding mysteriously activated or to be tailed by a black Audi while on assignment in the Chinese countryside. Nor are foreigners the only ones subject to such treatment. The days of communist neighborhood-committee grannies poking their noses into residents’ sex lives may be over, but it’s hard to feel completely private in China. Each Chinese citizen still has a dedicated personal file kept by local authorities. The contents are supposed to be secret but a friend who once gained accessed to hers found, among other things, an old high school paper and a copy of a letter from an ex-boyfriend. [Source]

A Chinese state-run newspaper has accused British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline Plc of evading at least 100 million yuan ($16.04 million) in taxes, adding to pressure on the firm which is already struggling with graft charges against executives.

[…] The Legal Daily newspaper, run by the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s Political and Legal Committee, reported on Friday that GSK intentionally imported Lamivudine, used to treat HIV as well as hepatitis, at an elevated cost.

Along with using tax loopholes for charitable donations, this helped GSK “avoid over 100 million yuan in import value-added tax and corporate income tax,” the report said.

The report followed less-detailed allegations by state news agency Xinhua saying GSK used transfer pricing to artificially reduce its profits and tax bill in China.

[…] The Legal Daily report also said that GSK had avoided import taxes by donating some of the imported drug to support state-backed treatment of the disease, adding GSK could have donated cheaper drugs that it produced at a plant in Suzhou instead. [Source]

This perception of politicized and selective prosecution is as bad for business as a genuine corruption crackdown would be good for it. Compounding the problem, Beijing is not aggressively pursuing the Chinese officials who participate in endemic corruption, despite efforts to tamp down on more overt displays of ill-gotten wealth. The few high-profile cases to emerge, such as last year’s trial of Chongqing Communist Party boss Bo Xilai, have centered on rivals to President Xi Jinping.

Meanwhile, authorities act against journalists and activists who expose corruption. In a case last year, a blogger known as “Boss Hua” was detained after pointing out that a local official had been photographed wearing an expensive watch. Earlier this year lawyer Xu Zhiyong was sentenced to four years in jail for “disturbing public order” by demanding officials publicly disclose their wealth.

[…] As for ordinary Chinese, they may cheer the prosecution of allegedly corrupt Western companies. But they also know the truth about their own leaders and their politicized courts. The longer Beijing pursues big graft cases against foreigners without rooting out corruption closer to the Communist Party’s heart, the more cynical and disillusioned they will become about their government. [Source]

After ten months of investigation, police found that William Mark Reilly, a British national and executive of GSK China, had ordered his subordinates to commit bribery, said the police of Changsha, capital of central China’s Hunan Province, in a statement.

Reilly allegedly pressed his sales teams to bribe hospitals, doctors and health institutions through various means and gained an illegal revenue worth of billions.

He and two other executives, Zhang Guowei and Zhao Hongyan, were also suspected of bribing officials with the industry and commerce departments of Beijing and Shanghai. [Source]

The Ministry of Public Security alleged that Reilly, GSK vice-president Zhang Guowei and GSK legal affairs supervisor Zhao Hongyan formed an emergency group in 2012 to bribe law enforcement and other officials in Beijing, Shanghai and elsewhere to block a government investigation of GSK.

“Reilly and other senior GSK executives proactively covered up the bribery activities and strongly maintained the financing channels through which the bribes were funnelled,” the ministry alleged.

Since 2010, GSK’s Chinese subsidiary GlaxoSmithKline (China) Investment (GSKCI) had spent tens of millions of yuan bribing hospitals to use GSK’s liver drugs instead of Chinese-produced drugs, the Ministry of Public Security claimed. GSKCI spent 13 million yuan buying gifts like cars, television sets and video cameras, which were given as bribes to clients in health-care organisations, it said.

[…] The prosecution of foreign nationals by the Chinese authorities is likely to prompt or accelerate similar investigations by the regulators of other countries, said Keith Williamson, head of forensic and dispute services for Asia at Alvarez & Marsal, an international professional services firm. [Source]

Kenneth Jarrett, president of the American Chamber of Commerce Shanghai, said he was surprised at the “strong response” from the police.

“I would agree that it’s not what I would have expected because it seemed like GSK were cooperating very closely with the authorities,” he told Reuters.

[…] China is a key growth market for large drugmakers, which are counting on its swelling middle class to offset declining sales in Western countries. China is set to be the second-biggest pharmaceuticals market behind the United States within three years, according to consultants IMS Health.

[…] “Later they could bring an action against the company and seek penalties against the company and I wouldn’t be surprised if they did that actually, because the claim is so egregious that the company could be charged and fined,” said Steven Dickinson, Qingdao-based partner with law firm Harris Moure.

“But the thing is you can’t put a company in jail and they want someone in jail. They want Mr. Reilly in jail for about 10 years. That’s what they’re looking to do,” he added. [Source]

Corrupt officials generally do not spend the huge sums they acquire from kickbacks, and are loath to deposit their money in banks for fear it will be discovered. So they hide their money instead. The professor estimates that as much as 50 percent of the surplus money supply may have been taken out of circulation for this reason.

[…] Xu Qiyao, a former chief of the construction department of Jiangsu Province, accepted some 20 million yuan in bribes. Parts of that sum were wrapped in layers of plastic and hidden in a hollow tree trunk, beneath an ash heap, in a rice field and inside a latrine.

Li Guowei, the former chief of the highway bureau in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, buried a box stuffed with 2.8 million yuan in a garbage heap next to a brother’s house. “I was an unlucky dog when I got picked out,” he said. [Source]

Hong Ruichao, deputy chief of the village committee, was under criminal custody on suspicion of taking bribes for public projects in the village, announced the Lufeng city government on its official Sina Weibo on Wednesday.

Hong Ruiqing, sister of the deputy chief, told the Global Times on Wednesday that the bribery took place in 2012 when contractors for the water pipe construction in the village offered 30,000 yuan ($4,839.80) to her brother, but all of it had been returned after a few days.

Another village deputy chief, Yang Semao, also confirmed the bribery, which added to his suspicions as he believed that investigators could have arrested Hong right after the crime. [Source]

Yang confirmed to the Global Times on Sunday that he had accepted 20,000 yuan ($3,251.9) in bribes last year.

But he donated half the money to a local school in the name of an anonymous donor and the other half was returned to the contractor, he told the Global Times.

Authorities investigated the same bribes in May last year, Yang said, but no punishment was given at that time.

“I was in charge of education and I didn’t know it would break the law when I used the money for an education fund,” he said. [Source]

South China Morning Post’s Teddy Ng reports that whether or not suspicions of a campaign to subvert the elections are justified, Wukan’s moment has passed:

In a first for the country, the ruling Communist Party eventually allowed villagers to choose their leaders in 2012. Seven village heads were elected from the grass roots – a victory observers dubbed the “Wukan model” and which prompted calls for elections in other mainland cities.

Three years on, however, the residents have become increasingly disillusioned and are unhappy that their lands have not been returned.

Peng Peng, a researcher at the Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences, said Hong and Yang’s cases raised concerns about officials meddling – but said the upcoming elections had diminished in significance as the momentum from the 2012 reform had waned.

“The election will not have a major impact nationwide. Its significance is overestimated.” [Source]

After his release last night, Yang denied accepting bribes related to village projects, as claimed in a statement by the Lufeng county government, which oversees Wukan.

[…] Some members of the village committee have become disillusioned with politics and their failure to secure the return of lost village land. Yang is only one of the Wukan’s democratically elected grass-roots leaders that has not withdrawn from the election.

“It can’t be just a coincidence,” Wukan activist Zhang Jianxing said of Yang’s detention. Zhang said that Yang had been organising villagers for the election, adding that “many villagers are angry about the return of the former cadres, but are afraid to speak out”. [Source]

宝四奔五: Old Li, was it you who was meddling? You sure have your feet in deep. You already irrigated the Three Gorges Dam project. //@宝四奔五: Was it Old Li? //@北京酋长: That’s quite a proposal!//@旷世羊倌: +1, I hope the aforementioned “Old Leader” is made public, and also the innocence of other old leaders (that is, if there still are any innocent old leaders).

马年大吉的宏：She is a strong person with no capital besides her own ability, who excels in virtue and learning. With her moral character, she looks down on the impure and acts as a model for them to establish their own ethics. Her own struggle has allowed countless children of retired leaders to join together in continuing the construction of the great motherland! Eldest sister, how will you die?

It was a “Chinese-style prison break,” according to news portal Tencent Finance: In 2007, Zhang Hai, then chairman of the Jianlibao Group, a congolomerate known for its energy drinks, was sentenced to 15 years in jail for fraud and embezzlement. In February 2011, he was released due to his assistance in helping solve other cases. Turns out, however, that Zhang’s selflessness wasn’t so selfless. In January 2014, Xinhua announced that Zhang hadn’t aided in other cases, but colluded with his lawyer, and a deputy warden, to get his freedom. (After being released, Zhang fled and remains at large as of this writing.)

It turns out that Zhang’s escape was no fluke: Money can buy freedom, or at least shorten jail terms, in some Chinese prisons. According to the respected paper Southern Weekend, Zhang’s lawyer bribed the deputy warden at the detention center where he was being held in southern Guangdong province, giving him about $5,000 in exchange for information that would help solve another case. The deputy warden then transferred the implicated prisoner to Zhang’s cell, so that Zhang would have a pretext to report the information himself. After Zhang tattled on his cellmate, the courts reduced Zhang’s 15-year sentence to 10 years. On two other occasions, Zhang’s “good behavior” led to further reductions first to eight years, then to six.

After Zhang’s scheme came to light, journalists began digging deeper into the world of Chinese prison politics. A former warden from the southern province of Jiangxi, who used the pseudonym Luo Xin, told the Southern Weekend that freedom was indeed for sale. “For only $17, you can find people to take tests for you and get the corresponding certificates,” Luo said. “For every certificate of achievement demonstrating a level of technical accomplishment, you can get 20 days off your sentence.” Luo added that buying newspapers, apparently a backdoor method to bribe prison workers, was another popular way to get out of jail early. “Buy 20 papers,” which cost about $5 each in the inflated prison economy, “and you can expect to reduce your sentence by 30 days,” he told Southern Weekend. [Source]

Liz Carter tweeted on Twitter an alternate headline to her article that speaks to the current state of the Chinese prison and justice systems:

Alternate headline considered: “Judges Hate Them! Four Weird Tricks Everyone’s Using to Get out of Chinese Jail!”